Divided Data Can Elude the Censor Free Speech7/28/2000; 8:11:34 AM 'The system is called Publius, after the pen name adopted by the authors of the Federalist Papers. It dices up messages, encrypts the pieces and spreads them across many computer servers. The pieces, called keys, are designed so that even a small number of them can be assembled into a complete message. Thus, while keys would live on dozens or hundreds of computers, a user would need to have access to only a few of those computers to have enough information to reassemble the document. Publius recently accepted its first users as part of a two-month trial.'Dr. Rubin said he hoped that political dissidents and others would use Publius to spread messages that otherwise would run the risk of being censored by autocratic governments or powerful organizations. In a paper about Publius, for example, Dr. Rubin and his co-authors, Dr. Lorrie Faith Cranor, a senior researcher at AT&T, and Marc Waldman, a doctoral student at New York University, wrote that the Church of Scientology tried to censor information about itself that it considered secret. "The Church has used copyright and trademark law, intimidation and illegal searches and seizures in an attempt to suppress the publication of Church documents," they wrote.'AT&T doing this? Wow... in today's climate, they will be sued as a liable party when something gets released that somebody doesn't like (the Church of Scientology, mentioned in the article, is a likely one), and by their own admission, they will be powerless to stop it. This is a bold thing for a company to support.